"Let Iraq Die: A Case for Partition" Topic

"Iraq is finished, an expiring, cancerous nation on life support. Pulling the plug might be merciful. It might be cruel. But either way, it's time to accept the fact that this country is likely to die and that we'll all be better off when it does.

ShareTweet EmailPrintThe Kurds in the north, who make up roughly twenty percent of the population, want out. They never wished to be part of Iraq in the first place. To this day, they still call the bathroom the "Winston Churchill," in sarcastic homage to the former British prime minister who shackled them to Baghdad. Since the early 1990s, they've had their own government and autonomous region in the northern three provinces, and they held a referendum in 2005 in which 98.7 percent voted to secede and declare independence. The only reason they haven't finally pulled the trigger is because it hasn't been safe; the Turks—who fear the contagion of Kurdish independence inside their own country—have threatened to invade if they did.

The Sunni Arabs in the west, who make up another rough twenty percent of Iraq, aren't itching for independence necessarily, but they sure as hell aren't willing to live under the thumb of Shiite-dominated Baghdad any longer. Millions of them live now under the brutal totalitarian rule of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, which has declared its own state not only in a huge swath of Iraq but also in much of northeastern Syria. ISIS either controls or has a large presence in more than fifty percent of Iraq at the time of this writing…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

The Kurds will need U.S. assistance in order to move forward toward independence or it'll get crushed by Turkey right out of the gate. The U.S. has been sorely lax in rewarding its only true ally in the region.

I'm kinda surprised that nobody has talked to Turkey and said, "Have as much of Syria as you want in exchange for letting the Kurds have Kurdistan."

Actually, Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan get along. They have diplomatic relations, mostly fueled by the oil that the Kurds are exporting thru Turkey, but Turkey is even investing in Kurdistan.

Not all Kurds are the same. Iraqi Kurds have a different political system than the Kurds in Turkey and Syria, who seek a communist form of government. They normally don't get along.

Of course, Turkey doesn't want their Kurdish population to get the idea that independence is achievable, but I doubt that Kurdistan really wants unification with the Turkish and Syrians as it would be more people sharing the "pie".

But with countries like Canada, India and Saudi Arabia opening political relations with Kurdistan, I am hoping that they have a real chance at autonomy.

"The U.S. has been sorely lax in rewarding its only true ally in the region."

The Kurds have never done anything for the U.S. that wasn't in their own interest.

And like cwl says, the Turks and Kurds get along pretty well. Turkey was the first country to formally sign trade agreements with the KRG.

The Kurds have never done anything for the U.S. that wasn't in their own interest.

So they're no different from any other nation in the world, most definitely including the US?

Dal.

The Kurds also have a terrorist background at the same level of AQ. Everything so quickly forgotten. Nobody wants to encourage them too much. Right now they feel threatened by their neighbors and are friendly, but Kurds feeling a bit more safe might not be as friendly as we want to believe.

Same as Al Qaeda? Seriously?

Which Kurds are terrorists? You mean all of them? There are 30 million of them.

If you had bothered to read about them, the Kurds in Syria, Turkey and Iraq have different political systems, agendas and enemies.

The Iraqi Kurds have been working with the USA since the 1960s. -Except for when the US abandoned them, whenever it no longer served US interests. Kurdistan had always been a safe haven for Americans as well all ethnic and religious minorities. Even Isreal has trained Peshmerga fighters.

Terrorists. Same as Al Qaeda? Bah!

"the Turks and Kurds get along pretty well."

Make sure your health insurance is up to date before you say that in the hearing of most Kurds.

I see people like to comment without knowing what is actually going on in Kurdistan.

Maybe … the borders drawn in the region by long dead European politicians after WWI. With little to no thought about the complex enthic, religious, tribal, etc., affilations, etc., but only for their own interests. Which is no surprise, regardless. But maybe a "Three State Solution" might work ?

The Sykes-Picot Agreement set up this house of cards almost a century ago and now we want to repeat those mistakes? Let the Arabs (and Iranians) decide their own frontiers and if they decide to create a new pan-Middle Eastern Caliphate, so be it. It is not for outsiders to determine their borders, that did not work a century ago and it will not work now. So Europe and America should stand aside and let the cards fall where they may.
Rod Robertson

Rod may be right. Placing (and never mind enforcing) some solution from some outside (ie, US, Europe, etc) entity wouldn't work. Like it or not, our best option may well be to let them sort it out and then deal with whatever comes out of it.

Let the Arabs (and Iranians) decide their own frontiers and if they decide to create a new pan-Middle Eastern Caliphate,

I totally agree … Hopefully … some day they will "re-draw" the map. To suit their own "needs", on their own accord …